Lumps in throats for the 'lucky' ones at Monte Cassino

The Herald has returned to Monte Cassino with veteran Bill Marsh, who does not like to talk about his wartime friends 'because a lot of them got killed' - By MICHELE HEWITSON

Red poppies grow along the roadside opposite the Cassino War Cemetery.

Of course they do. You might think to say so is a bit of a cliche.

But when you pick one and give it to an old soldier and he stands there twirling it in his fingers as he listens to a recital of the numbers of young soldiers buried in the place, you might find you get a small lump right in the bottom of your throat.

You might. Bill Marsh, the old soldier we have followed from Bombay, Auckland, to Cassino, got his hanky out after we all sang Amazing Grace at the Royal British Legion Service of Remembrance at the Cassino cemetery.

He shakes his head. "I'm just blowing my nose," he says.

After the service, a New Zealand veteran stands before a grave, holding his hat in his hands before him. The cemetery is crowded with veterans and officials, politicians and dignitaries.

This man is having a private, quiet conversation with a friend he last spoke to 60 years ago, when they were both young soldiers.

In an odd sort of way, Marsh feels it is disrespectful to talk about his dead friends.

"That's why I don't talk so much, because a lot of them got killed.

"They've gone and passed. They've gone, and unlucky for the ones that got killed and lucky for the ones that got out of it."

Says another vet: "We're here - and they're not."

"So many dead," adds another.

Marsh shakes his head again: "Stupid, isn't it. They're all young men."

A list of ages from one row of graves: 24, 25, 28, 23, 19 ... And that's enough, really. You want to stop there.

It's the names that matter - at least they matter in a different way.

Marsh is looking. He can't discover where his friends are buried today.

But the vets will return for a visit without the ceremony - and all the people - later in the week. He hopes to find some names he knows then. If he doesn't, well, the names are all kept inside his head.

Cassino cemetery - like most war cemeteries - is a beautiful place created where there was once chaos.

The graves are planted with roses and tiny carnations and thyme. This will be a good place to remember.

Marsh looks up at that great big rock, Monte Cassino, and remembers months in the mud and days in filthy clothes.

When you are a soldier on the side of a hill that has turned into a bog, it pays not to think about who has gone down beside you, he says.

"You just had to carry on. If you're going to lose tears you get nowhere."

The soldiers who made it through are bound by more than loss. Soldiering - as they recall with the incredulity of distance - is about putting-up-with: that bloody mud, the dirty clothes, the grub.

After another lump-forming ceremony to lay a wreath at the Cassino railway station, with the remnants of the 28 Maori Battalion lined up before the memorial plaque while the trains come and go to the accompaniment of a waiata, a couple of vets complain about the food on the trip.

"There's a McDonald's up the road," says one, looking hopeful.

The food surely can't be as bad as the bully beef they ate 60 years ago.

"I think it might be worse," says the other.

They're complaining a bit, but not too much. They've just been to the cemetery. They know how much worse it could be.

"Could have been me in here," Marsh says. "Could have been me."

* TOMORROW: Bill Marsh and the veterans go to Rome.